This invention relates to the field of computer systems. More particularly, a method and apparatus are provided for facilitating the ordering of objects within a form or document.
Forms and other types of documents manipulated by users (e.g., web forms, database templates) often contain fields, radio buttons, icons and/or other objects to be manipulated or viewed by the users. Those objects are typically presented in some predefined order or sequence. For example, a user may complete a sequence of input fields by supplying the corresponding input for a field and pressing the “Tab” key to navigate to the next field. Or, a sequence of news stories, headlines or other content may be presented in a particular order.
However, existing methods of ordering objects within a document are unsatisfactory. In particular, systems for authoring or designing forms, user interfaces and other documents are generally non-intuitive and provide insufficient information to the operator as the objects are ordered.
For example, in some existing systems objects are ordered by clicking on the objects in the desired sequence or order. However, there is typically no visual indication of the current index or ordinal position within the sequence (i.e., the index to be assigned to the next object that is clicked), thereby making it difficult for an operator to keep track of which or how many objects have been ordered. If the operator is interrupted while ordering the objects, or cannot remember the current index for some other reason, she may have to start all over again.
Some systems allow a current index of a sequence to be reset based on the index of an object that has already been ordered, perhaps in preparation for re-ordering the objects that followed the selected object in the sequence. In these systems, however, there may be no indication of what the current index would be reset to.
Even if an index value is displayed for the operator, there is no indication of whether that index is the current index to be assigned to the next object or an index of an already-ordered object to be used to reset the current index.